Whitson Gordon

Readers offer their best tips for copying and pasting with your mouse, getting a head start on your shower while it warms up, and keeping Firefox's URL bar clean.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons—maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in—the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments, email it to tips at lifehacker.com, or share it over at our user-run blog, Hackerspace.

Use Back and Forward Mouse Buttons for Copy and Paste

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Phillip Baxter fights RSI with mouse shortcuts:

I don't know why I didn't do this ages ago. I'm a programmer, and I sometimes start to get RSI issues when I have to do a lot of copy-pasting. Something about that Left Ctrl key!

Anyway, it just occurred to me that I rarely use the "Forward" and "Back" buttons on my Logitech mouse, so I installed the driver for the mouse, brought up the configuration software, selected the buttons and hit "Edit". Under the "Command Editor," I selected "Keystroke" and set the Forward button to be Ctrl+C and the Back button to be Ctrl+V. Much easier on the wrist!

Hurry Through Your Shower with a Shampoo Head Start

If you're like me, you often stay in bed until you really need to get up and going which cuts down on prep-time. When you're late, it seems like the water takes forever to warm up. While you could use the time to brush your teeth, rinse with some mouthwash, or any number of other things, here's a tip to help move along your morning routine and cut down wasted time if all you want is a seriously fast shower.

While the water is still cold, just wet your head down and hold it over the shower (assuming you have a tub type shower). Your head generally can take the icy cold, death water when it would not be comfortable hopping in completely. With your head wet, you can now carefully apply shampoo and by the time you're ready to rinse your head, you can climb in the tub and get clean.

Keep Firefox's Navigation Bar Blank when No URL Is Typed

We know what the URL bar is for. If you want to get rid of that "go to a web page" or "search or enter address" or whatever's in the URL bar by default, set this to False in about:config:

dom.placeholder.show_on_focus

It just looks cleaner when that text is not there.

Clean Dusty Lampshades with a Lint Roller

Gregory Kanaan keeps his living room clean:

If your lampshades are covered in dust like mine were after my wife and I moved, you can clean them off with a standard cheap lint roller. Because they're round, they don't damage the shade and the dust comes right off. Your lampshades will look like new AND they'll shine brighter.

I can see this being useful for fabric-based lampshades on which dusters don't work as easily. Photo by Nadiona.